Public Facebook groups and viral video posts have been used for weeks to plan and equip the swim into Ceuta, before thousands of people converged on the Moroccan border town of Fnideq on July 30.
One of the groups, Hraga Ceuta, had more than 20,000 members when the local broadcaster Ceuta TV documented it on July 27. The name comes from a north African term for those who cross illegally into Europe.
Members shared Google Maps screenshots measuring the distance around the Tarajal breakwater, the concrete spur that marks the frontier where it meets the water. Others posted photographs of wetsuits, diving fins and arrivals on the Spanish shore.
Fins were advertised for sale in Casablanca and users pooled money to buy a kayak. Participants asked how to reach Castillejos or Beliones by taxi and whether security checks would take their details.
One post asked who was available to join a crossing that week, the newspaper reported. Ceuta TV said membership of the groups did not in itself mean users had attempted the swim.
The same channels were used in the summer of 2024, when TikTok videos called for a mass crossing on September 15 of that year. Moroccan security services arrested several people over that campaign and fenced off stretches of the Castillejos beach, after which arrivals fell sharply.
From mid-July people travelled to Fnideq from across Morocco and settled there to wait for conditions that would allow the swim. Local reporting described a town filling with young men from every region of the country.
By July 30 the mobilisation had become a mass movement, with thousands running along the Fnideq seafront towards the border. Moroccan auxiliary forces did not hold the crowd, and arrests near the crossing failed to disperse it, EFE reported.
Much of the momentum rested on a false claim that the frontier had been opened. One young man running with friends asked reporters whether it was now possible to enter Spain without papers, while an elderly man wanted to know what documents to bring.
The Moroccan daily Ajbarona has reported that WhatsApp groups and a wider social media campaign helped drive the mobilisation. Spanish and Moroccan authorities have both blamed people-smuggling networks for exploiting a Supreme Court ruling that barred summary returns at sea.
Neither government has said whether the groups were monitored before the crossings overwhelmed the city.
